The present invention relates to the field of locating a waypoint on a flight display of a navigation system.
Navigation systems for aircraft provide various aircraft data and land data to pilots during the operation of the aircraft. In some navigation systems, the aircraft data and land data are provided on a single display so that a pilot has fewer instruments to monitor. Other navigation systems are further enhanced with a moving navigation map graphically depicting land data, such as roads, towers, mountains, lakes, and other geographic identifiers. These navigation maps further may include symbols identifying waypoints, such as airports, intersections identifying where different flight plans and/or airways intersect, non-directional beacons (NDBs), very high frequency omni-directional radio identifiers (VORs), user defined waypoints, and other waypoints. Typically, a specific symbol identifies each type of waypoint and/or landmark. Additionally, the navigation maps may include aircraft data, such as air speed, bearing, tracking, and other aircraft data.
The land data and aircraft data (collectively, navigation data) sometimes becomes complex when presented to an aircraft pilot on one or more displays. Enabling the aircraft pilot to directly manipulate the navigation data by enabling an aircraft pilot to select one or more waypoints, and the associated waypoint data, may lower the complexity of some operations the aircraft pilot completes while operating the aircraft. Further, enabling the aircraft pilot to select a waypoint and, in response, generating additional information for the selected waypoint may help the pilot safely select a flight plan and/or navigate a selected flight plan.
However, identifying and selecting one waypoint and its associated navigation data may require an aircraft pilot to interact with the navigation system more than desired. Therefore, systems and methods are desired that will quickly and unambiguously help the aircraft pilot locate a waypoint and its associated navigation data on a moving navigation map.
In one aspect, the present invention is directed to a method for identifying a waypoint on a navigation map generated for a flight display. The method comprises receiving an input for selecting the waypoint. The method includes generating, in response to the input, a waypoint locator symbol relative to the selected waypoint and a waypoint pointer symbol between the waypoint locator symbol and a position on the navigation map representing a present position.
In another aspect, the present invention is directed to a system for identifying a waypoint for a flight display. The system comprises an aeronautical data unit configured with cartography data, a navigation database configured with waypoint data, a navigation engine, and a graphics engine. The navigation engine is configured to receive the waypoint data from the navigation database, to receive a user input for a selected waypoint, and to transmit the waypoint data and an identification of the selected waypoint to the graphics engine. The graphics engine is configured to receive the cartography data from the aeronautical unit, to receive the waypoint data and the selected waypoint identification from the navigation engine, and to generate a navigation map for display. The navigation map comprises a selected waypoint symbol identifying the selected waypoint, a waypoint locator symbol relative to the selected waypoint symbol, and a waypoint pointer symbol between the waypoint locator symbol and a position on the navigation map representing a present position.